I like the idea of Supply lines determining the time limit of a fight.  Not sure how something like that would be implemented though.  The idea that a siege could be lifted by having an external force cut off their supply chain is just a really cool option.  But it could also become annoying if it only takes one unit to cut supply.   Not to mention it automatically applies a lose timer to the defender unless they can manage to reestablish supply.... All these options would require the players to leave tactical while it's occuring to manage units and battles elsewhere.  Which would slow Tactical battles even more.

HOWEVER..... It ties in with the inherent multiplayer issue that tactical battles become boring for players not involved.  Even being able to watch the match isn't enough to keep players interested.  And the greatest hinderence to quick matches and flowing rounds is when players get so bored they neglect to realize they're free to end their turn, or that it is their turn.   Being able to have tactical battles occur while things are still going on in the world map would certainly keep the game flowing.  An Icon or the ability for any player to zoom in to battle as it's happening and zoom out via Lord of the Realms 3 would be interesting.  Though I'm sure there are downsides to that playstyle I'm not thinking of.... such as your opponent having to wait while you attend to a battle elsewhere.  Or even forgetting that you have a battle going on.  LoR3 solved the problem by having the AI control your units while you were away.  Granted their battles were real time...

^^;; just a thought though.

About winner take all, here is a intuitive solution to what "N" (Number of turns before attackers start losing morale) could be. Make it about the commanders leadership, obviously the exact number will have to be tweaked, but a high leadership attacking commander should be capable of keeping men on the field a lot longer.

Additionally, "N" could increase as the attacking units do damage to defenders. Start it out very low, maybe 5+leadership turns until collapse. Then, for every defensive unit routed, add +1 turn, or something akin to that. Basically, force the attacker to attack, thus giving the defender a chance to use his terrain to appropriately defend.

Another concept about winner take all that I like is that it forces battles to be truly epic. However one thing that needs to be in is retreats, as otherwise players are punished too harshly for entering battles they can't win. As a newbie, one thing that would really turn me off from a game would be to enter a battle thinking that the odds are even, only to realize a turn in that those weak-looking archers are firing magma arrows or something.

Perhaps the longer a battle goes on, the more severe the penalty for retreating. Defenders who retreat at the start of a battle should be less effected than attackers unless the attackers have a sizable mounted, or just very fast moving, army. Then large numbers of the defenders should be overrun and/or captured (see below). When attackers retreat, the same thing should happen except more painful, for no reason other than making attackers really think about what they are doing. You shouldn't lose your whole army, and your leaders/heroes should largely escape, but retreats should weaken a player notably.

One last newish concept that I have is that of capturing soldiers. I don't think it should be much more complicated than in the total war series, however for heroes perhaps it could be a tad bit more involved. After winning an enemy battle in which they were forced to retreat (and maybe as a special attack ability of some units (equipped with nets), or a bonus given by certain generals) you get a set of options.

Release - You simply send the captured men back to the enemy empire. Seen as a very kind act by all nations who know of the conflict, and a good way to get your enemy to the peace table.

Ransom - You attempt to sell the units back to your enemy. Cost could be based on a percentage of training price. If they decline the men are automatically put to the sword. Both countries lose a little reputation and relations become even more strained.

Slaughter - You simply kill the men, destroying your image internationally and causing a deep hatred by the enemy empire. Maybe kingdoms don't get this option?

Enslave - You put them to work in the nearest city, granting a X turn boost of a random resource by Y percent. Relations are strained and you look very bad.

and perhaps other options. Maybe for heroes have an option to attempt to convert them, increase the ransom 5 fold (10 fold for a sovereign), or even brainwash them and send them as spies to the enemy nation?

Anyway, i'm excited for the new system, cant wait to see it implemented!

This is my first post in any forum ever! (it feels good to be out of the lurkers closet)

In my opinion, the manner in which combat is handled will make or break this game.

I think combat speed, moral, terrain that matters are all vital to creating interesting combat.  I also really want to see different abilities for the units that make them unique as this adds a lot of strategy and variety.  

I would like to see the ability to retreat.  Some units should be better at it than others.  Mounted units and stealth should escape easily while war machines and heavy infantry should not.

I do not want to see limitations on the length of battle in any form.

randomization vs richness - I vote Richness

It looks like I am the minority here and I understand that playing on the same maps would get stale but.... I have yet to play a randomized battle map that I thought was cool or that made a difference.  I am thinking HOMM, Age of wonders, kings bounty series.  They are all the same with a rock here and there, maybe a fallen tree or whatever but combat is basically the same every single battle.  To me, this is the epitome of a lack of variety.  With the richness option, we could have maps that would actually change our strategy.

I think that stardock could have map making contests pre-release and choose the best ones to include at launch along with their own.  This game is made to be mod friendly so we could have hundreds or thousands of hand made maps eventually.  The expansions would include new maps as well.  I admit that at launch, those who play many hours every day will get tired of only having a few hundred maps but in the long run we should have tons of maps of much higher quality than just 1 rock moved 2 squares to the left.

Pre-made battle maps obviously should be filtered based on where the battle is taking place.  If battle is in a forest square than it the RNG would only select from the forest square maps.  The maps could be designed to give the defender the advantage through better concealment or tiles with defensive bonuses.  This seems much more realistic and fun to me.  

Random maps VS rich maps - why not a bit of both? Make a number of really deep pre-made maps (leaving an easy interface for players to add more) and have simple random maps that are inter-spaced in the rotation. If you go all pre-made like it seems your leaning towards, you get a situation where people know what to expect from a map and it becomes repetitive (unless we are talking an insane amount of pre-mades - the kind an active modding community could provide with the right tools *wink*)

* WINNER. TAKE. ALL.

Don't like this.  Maybe in certain situations such as taking on a city, or your units are surrounded and have no way to retreat.  There are plenty of ideas posted here on this

* Thresholds.

I don't want to see a minimum threshold on when you can go into a tactical battle.  I should be able to any time I want, but having the ability to switch this over to auto-resolve is a nice thing to have.


Controlling the length of a tactical battle.

I think this really might only come into play with multi-player.  If I'm playing single I don't care how long the battle lasts so much.  Now in Multi that could really come into play.  I'd say in that case take the size of the fight (total units) and then some random variable, and let it go x amount of time.  Once that time is reached the battle ends (say due to darkness) and the fight will continue the next turn phase with both units sharing that space on the main map.

Randomization vs. Richness.

Love Randomization, but really love the idea of having the best of both worlds.  Love the idea of having set maps as maybe historical battle-fields from the Titan wars where pre-made maps are used.  A frequency number could be assigned where this map might appear 1 in 100 games while others might be 1 in ever 10.  Combats that occur within so many squares then use that map.  It also gives some unique items on the main map as a whole, as well as possible tactical advantages.  Hey I know that map well, I'll build my city near it so that I can use it to my advantage.

Can't wait to see more!

I read lots of good ideas here. One clear apsect I saw is that people don't like arbitary limitations on thier ability to do what they want. Funny that.

The only really big choice is the terrain choice. Handcrafted versus generated. My question is why havn't you got a system that randomly places hand crafted sections together with some random generation between them. I don't want that feeling of "oh its the same map again". Xcom did it best, even though I knew each warehouse, each house, each and every terrain section by heart I NEVER knew the configuration that ment a LOT to X-Coms tactical combat gameplay.

Without the unknown effect Enemy Unkown (did you see what I did there?) would be a inferior game. And so will yours! Dun dun DUHN!!

One quick thought here that I haven't seen mentioned (I have to run).

In my experience, one thing that makes tactical battles take so long is that I feel like I have to look at every single unit each turn and decide on their moves.  I wonder if introducing some sort of "command point" system would help with that.

For the sake of discussion, here's a sketch:

1. At the beginning of the first turn of combat, you give orders to each unit on the map.  These are RTS-style actions ("attack this unit", "move to this position", etc) and can be queued ("circle to the north side of the city, break down the gates, then head for the battlements and attack everything in sight").  There is a maximum queue depth of, say, 3.  Ideally the player could review and modify the orders they're issuing before clicking "end turn'.
2. Each turn thereafter, you get a number of "command points" each turn based on your empire's technology level and the attributes of the generals / heroes leading your army.  Normally this would be, say, twenty or less.  Actually, depending on how much happens in a turn, twenty even sounds a bit high -- I might cap it at ten or fifteen to keep things moving along.
3. On your turn, you can spend one command point to rewrite the orders of one unit.  For instance, if you have 5 command points, you can give orders to 5 units per turn.
4. Units that you don't give orders to continue enacting their orders from previous 
5. Each unit should also have "standing orders" saying what happens when its queue is empty.  Unlike normal orders, these never end.  Standing orders could include things like "hold and defend", "attack on sight, then return to position", and "roam the map, attacking every enemy you meet".

Now, I'm not much of a wargamer, so what I wrote above is just a sketch and there may be better ways to do it.  Toplevel concepts (EDITED to be clearer):

1. Command queues (used well) eliminate the need to micromanage each unit each turn.
2. Command points force the player to limit their micromanagement, which should create an incentive to use command queues well.
3. Hopefully the combination of these two features will eliminate some of the tedium that tactical combat can suffer from and make battles a bit quicker.  They should also make battles more "cinematic", since most units will move on their own each turn.

I don't think we'll know how feasible this is until we see how tactical combats actually play out.  e.g., in something like Age of Wonders this would be unworkable; there are too many individual units, and the commands you can give them are too limited.  (plus, my units seemed to forget their queued commands half the time)  It would also be good to have UI that supports this -- e.g., being able to see the current commands of many units at once (e.g., as arrows) so you don't have to click on them individually to see what you want to edit this turn.  Something a bit like Sins of a Solar Empire's "hold shift to see all your orders" feature.

I already spent more time on this than I should have (hah, exhausted my command points), so I'll stop here.

Just gotta say that the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am at the dropping of continuous turns. That could have been something pretty special. I'm also late to the party, but I read the whole thread and will try to add some points that haven't been said (though some of it will be repetition).

I think in game terms, Sauron has a cleave attack that lets him attack everything in one direction at once (aka: AoE). He could swing at Isildur just as quickly as he could swing at an entire division of foot soldiers. The difference was that his one attack hit all of them at once. He didn't hit all ten of them with seperate attacks then hit Isildur 10 times, he actually swung once and hit all 10, or swung once and hit Isildur. (If he was actually capable of swinging his weapon so fast that he could hit 10 times when normal units can only attack once, the veolcity of the weapon would create so much force that it'd flatten anything it hit.)

In theorycrafter terms, combat speed is a VERY dangerous stat. Because by its nature it inflates the effectiveness of other stats, it tends to become wildly imbalancing. For example a unit with a combat speed of 1 finds a +4 damage sword, and gains 4 damage. A unit with a combat speed of 2 just gained 8 damage, and a unit with a combat speed of 10 just gained 40 damage. It also works the other way. For a unit with a damage rating of 10, adding 1 damage rating goes to 11. Adding 1 combat speed pushes the damage all the way to 20. Once a unit has any reasonable level of damage, combat speed will vastly outpace damage as a superior stat.

Having it tied to movement also doesn't make a lot of sense. A mounted archer can move a lot faster then a walking archer. A mounted archer can't fire 3 times the arrows of a walking archer in the same period of time.

If it were up to me, I'd scrap this stat entirely.

I like the concept. I don't like the implementation, as it's not very granular and any change in the morale standing leads to very large swings in combat. It also limits the kind of effects you can have.

I'd prefer to see Morale being a number that acts as a % modifier. Start at 100 for normal morlae, which is 100% effectiveness. Then lets say your hero unit uses "Rallying Cry", which rallies the troops and increases morale by 5. You then attack and successfully kill an enemy hero, which increases morale by 10. Now you're at 115% effectiveness, and the fight is going well.

With a system like that, a lot more things can affect morale, and it can be better tied to what is going on in combat. You can't do that when the only change allowed is a 25% combat effectiveness swing.

Why do tiles matter for this? On the world map, both armies are in the same space, and thus effectively on the same terrain. That doesn't require tiles on the combat map.

First of all, I think that going turn based and then worrying about the length of combat is a contradiction, as by its very nature turn based leads to long, drawn out combat (incredibly so once more then 2 players are involved).

That said, I'm not a fan of this idea. The main problem is that it's not going to accomplish what you hope it will. Defenders in this system have an active incentive to drag the fight out early on as much as possible. The longer they can find a way to avoid engaging their units, the more the attacker's morale suffers and the stronger the defender gets. As a defender, I would NEVER charge to meet an attacker in this system. I'd move and hide as much as I possibly could, and use every slowing spell I can find to delay fighting until the morale shift. The more units I can keep out of combat until then, the better off I am.

Morale penalties for time cna also lead to bizzare situations. If I just killed the defenders elder dragon, why would my morale go down? So what if it took me 6 turns to do it? That was a HUGE victory, and my foot soldiers would be emboldened by defeating the major force standing against them, not suddenly depressed because they couldn't one shot a dragon. Castle sieges have the same problem. If I just took down the wall and started storming the place, wouldn't my morale go up? That's a victory, punishing me because it took a few turns to do it doesn't make any sense.

The net effect here is to encourage attackers to be reckless and throw everything they have into the fight at the start, and for defenders to delay as much as possible. It doesn't really boost strategy.

As for retreat options, retreat is more realistic. Defenders rarely fight to the death unless they have to (defending a castle on a cliff with only one way out leaves few options in a siege, but fighting in a town with multiple escape paths won't leave an entire garrison fighting to the last man against overwhelming odds), and attackers don't tend to keep attacking if they are getting slaughtered without making any progress. Video games tend to do both of those things because units are cheap and killing them opens up room for the new ones players are cranking out.

The single biggest argument in the other thread in favor of turn based tactical battles was that people can take as long as they want to think and plan. Worrying about how long it takes while going with the system whose entire strength is that it can take a long time is counterproductive.

With the system you're using now, tactical battles will take a long time. Trying to enforce ways to change that will simply annoy the people who wanted that system (by taking away the main benefit), without doing much for those of us that wanted continuous turns or realtime (turn based is still slow and involves a lot of waiting in multiplayer).

As people have mentioned, both if it's possible. If not, premade ones.

Here is my 2 cents on combat...

Combat- As some people have stated being able to attack multiple tiles is a cool idea for some units! Big ogre takes a swing with his club and hits 3 different tiles at once.

Morale- Also tie in units veteran levels into this. Don't make the bonuses to big though. Also when higher experience unit panics there is a higher chance that they will come back under your control and possibly sooner too... If the whole army panics you lose!

Terrain- Battles can alter the terrain and spells even more so!

Winner Take All- Be like Total War as in you can retreat only once a turn. Then you got to slug it out. Once you give the order to retreat you can't attack back and your army is more vulnerable (so retreating sooner than later is wiser). Maybe a slider for for N. As in turn it off. Move it over so its really short so defenders will have advantage in short fights. Or its really long so attackers can take their time before morale starts to drop. I am sure I play with all of these settings.

Combined Arms- Why does having a mount affect how fast a unit can attack? I understand that a mount would make a unit travel faster. Giving them more options and hell think of flanking bonuses!  Hammer and Anvil! etc... (Yes I love total war!)

Thresholds- Sounds good to me!

Battle Length- Again another slider so if you want it fast or long or anywhere in between!

Random VS Richness- Both... You said there was an arena mode where you just fight with units in quick battles so have a choice on the map for random, and if you want pick a specially made map. And for the full game you get random more than rich maps but sometimes you do get rich maps to fight on. Keep adding in Rich maps and improve on random generated ones.

EDIT: Please forgive the wall of text.

While normally I read or skim everyone else's post before making my own, this time around I decided to just throw in my opinions, and then go back and read...everyone else's post. So things covered beforehand, I'm sorry, I won't know about.

Is it feasible to have a screenshot/drawing of what we're looking at, Brad? Something to go on?

Regarding Combat Speed and Combined Armies

I think Sauron was so badass because he could use one attack to hurt so many people at once. I mean, seriously, how cool is it to watch some giant [thing] clad in black steel swing a massive warmace and send dozens of infantry flying through the air? Wouldn't mind having something like this in game...

Otherwise, having varied speed makes sense.

However, there is one thing that really annoys me in strategy games - when I have two infantry guarding an archer, and the horseman can run between them unhindered and kill my archer. Or just attack my archer - cause harm. So, I was thinking...

Again, please note I haven't played the Beta.

Since in most games, Horse > Archer > Infantry > Pikemen > Horse, why not allow for pike weapons to either strike at a further distance (if tiles are smaller, so that one tile is not a massive distance, then one tile away) or allow them to counter charging cavalry from within a certain radius. So if my Halberdier has a halberd, if any horseman comes within one tile of him, he can take a swipe.

Now, the reason why that's in here with Combat Speed,..Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic had a nifty system of draining your movement points when your unit retaliated on an opposing unit's turn. That is, if I moved my Halberdier 5 of his 15 movement points forward, and two horsemen come at him, he can make a swipe at one (let's say that attacking costs 7 movement points). That swipe would leave him with 15-7=8 movement points for his turn. The next horseman comes, he makes another swipe, and thus is at 8-7=1 movement points next turn.

A higher combat speed (determinance of actions per turn) could play into that. Thus, if my halberdier had 30 movement, and could take actions from that pool, it's better than him having 15 movement. Heavier armored units should have a penalty to movement/combat speed without some sort of alterations. This makes armies filled with lightly armored dual wielding dervishes as viable as an army of heavily armed and armored knights.

Short version: I like it.

Regarding Morale

Yes. Morale is good. I would take it a step further...from Panicing/Routing > Low Morale > Normal Morale >High Morale > Zealous Morale, where Zealous Morale represents a totally blind devotion and a desire to destroy anything and everyone.

Leaders could impact morale - a Sovereign always has High Morale for his army (initially, as a basic) while leaders could have morale variance based on their leadership qualities. Winning/losing battles, running low on supplies (if such things matter) could impact morale before and after a battle. Likewise, if you are going to have multi-national armies, perhaps have there be a penalty for using soldiers of the nationality that you are currently at war with.

That is, if I just captured one of Procipinee's cities and recruited 500 of her soldiers into my army, my soldiers would look at them and say, "Well, they're with us now, huh? A pity that Bob can't see this. Where is Bob, you ask? Oh, one of those bastards ran a spear through him. Yeah, we want them around...what's the boss thinking?" while Proc's old soldiers would look at mine and say, "Didn't they just slaughter our defenders, take control over our city, warp our way of life, and generally make our city a smoldering shadow of it's former glory? I don't like this."

Regarding Tactical Combat: Turn Length/Battle Length

When I first saw the limit, my first thought was this, "Okay...so if the battle lasts all day and night begins to fall, both sides fall back to their camps, lick their wounds, and can try again the next day. Or perhaps they arrange a night sortie into the enemy camp." Essentially: Battle has ended for the day, pull back and regroup.

This was done in Sid Meier's Pirates! as when night fell, you couldn't see the enemy ship(s) and they escaped (essentially leaving the map). I think that this makes sense...soldiers did not spend all day fighting in melee combat. There was no way that it could be done. As fit or strong as a soldier would be, spending hours moving around in heavy armor and swinging a heavy sword, or hours moving around and fighting with sword/mace/axe and shield would be totally impossible.

So instead of having a set number of turns or a set amount of time, why not simply incorporate fatigue? I know that a number of games play around with a fatigue bar, and I think that's a viable method here. Barring that, expending a unit's total movement points or using a bunch of unit abilities simple wears units down. Instead of having a set amount of turns where you must win, you could have a set amount of turns where your units have to win or they'll need to head back for nap time.

Fatigued units slowly become next to useless. Perhaps there are levels of fatigue - using all unit points makes a unit fatigued. Using abilities excessively makes a unit fatigued. Fighting in prolonged combat makes a unit fatigued. As time goes on, fatigue takes its toll naturally, so even a unit that has just been standing by doing nothing will, after a large number of turns, will be tired.

Thus, units that fight and act on the battlefield become tired faster than units that do nothing, but all become tired after a while. As units become more fatigued, their abilities and actions cost more points. Perhaps, following with my Halberdier example above, after 15-20 turns of fighting to attack, where once it cost 7 to attack (or counterattack) it could cost 10 or 12. After 40 turns of fighting it'll cost 20 or even all points to attack. My halberdier has gone from being able to do a lot in one turn (move, strike, move again, counterstrike) to just one thing or two (move or strike, no more). Eventually, attacking would cost ALL movement points, or even cost more - making that unit totally worthless.

As a Sovereign, it could be possible to use spells to freshen units in combat. "Second Wind" could take one level of fatigue off of all units, or could replenish 50% of all unit's fatigue bar. "Breath of the Sovereign" could totally undo fatigue, at a cost of essence.

Champions/generals with high leadership incur a reduction in movement points needed to do anything. So my level 15 General with 10/10 max leadership gets a, I dunno, 75% reduction on actions. Therefore, having a leader with high leadership would massively offset fatigue, but eventually the fatigue would overcome the general.

However, it could easily get to the point where Sovereigns are just spamming "Second Wind" or "Breath of the Sovereign" and making battles last an eternity. Therefore, I think that eventually, night should fall and units should be forced to fall back. Battle length could be determined, then, by what you decide it to be. Perhaps when battle begins, the screen pops up saying "Tactical Combat" "Auto Combat" etc and showing the various armies and their bonuses and features, so on so forth. On the screen would be either a bunch of buttons, or a little clock (or sundial, or what have you) and you can 'grab' the sun with your mouse and move it to where you want combat to be. Want to fight at dawn? Move it all the way over to the left. Noon? in the middle. Dusk? Very end.

You, Brad, and the Beta Testers will need to determine the set length. Perhaps a battle lasting all day (morning start) would have 100-200 turns, and one lasting a few hours (dusk) would last 10-20 turns. Perhaps many more, perhaps much less.

Barring fatigue, perhaps leadership would determine how long you had to fight. I really think that having leaders should matter, and leaders who are skilled in what they do even more. It will draw a debate in terms of battle - do I want a leader capable of slaughtering dozens of soldiers with each attack, ala Sauron? Or a mage-type leader who can unleash waves of fire and roast armies in their plate, ala some sort of high mage? Or perhaps I want a simple man who is so skilled at battle, he can use soldiers like the slaughtering leader and the mage leader? Options, yet again.

Sword of the Stars had a set tactical battle length, usually of 4 minutes. There was a slider, at the start of a game, where you could have battles last but a minute, or up to ten minutes. It was up to the player(s) as to how long, and it didn't change. So if I want to have long battles, I set it up before the game. Short battles...before the game.

Likewise, as a Sovereign, I could have the power to adjust the length of combat...mid combat. Casting "Nightfall" or "Eclipse" could reduce the number of turns of combat. Casting "Shine" or "Sunlight" could increase the number of turns of combat.

Regarding Maps

To be random, or to be rich? Ah, who can say? King Arthur: The Role Playing Game had 'rich' battlefields. That is, whenever I'd start combat, a painting-like picture would come up next to a number of battlefields with a description. The "Sandy Bay" could have once been a battlefield where King Uther Pendragon cast down his enemies amidst flourishing forests next to a village-packed bay.

It allows for a lot of strategic options. You could easily design maps that place emphasis on fighting amongst rivers, or hills, forests and villages, etc. Perhaps battlefields could encompass a choke point in a valley. However, I found this method somewhat...difficult to use. It made choosing battlefields somewhat difficult, if not pointless. If I have my general build a fort next to a bridge, I expect that fort and that bridge to be taken into account. Else, what's the point of fighting next to that bridge?

When it comes to randomness vs. pre-made maps, either have a LOT of pre-made maps, or use the random. Because without a LOT of pre-made maps, it'll be impossible to determine things from the area. This also should take into nearby things...if I fight in the vicinity of the Well of Life, I'd like the effects of the Well of Life, if not the Well itself, to be part of the battle (my units regenerate 1 hp/turn perhaps).

I favor random that takes into account nearby things. I also favor the ability to build things on the map, such as fortifications (build an actual fort, ala Total War, or build up traps and the like...Elemental could be one of the few games that takes sappers into account!) that will influence battle and actually show up. Some things that could be done...

• Rabbit Holes - all horsemen that are charging have a 60% chance per tile when passing through the rabbit holes to be dehorsed and take damage. Digs a number of small holes between the armies. Horses that pass through the holes have a good chance of stepping into the holes, resulting in broken limbs and the loss of a rider.
• Sharpened Stakes - enemies who try to cross the sharpened stakes take damage and lose movement points. Sharpening stakes and arranging them like a pike wall is an excellent defense, but not one to make idly
• Tar Pits - initially, tar pits reduce movement through them by 75%. When the tar pits come into contact with fire, they burst into flame, dealing heavy fire damage to all units within them and reducing combat abilities. Extremely expensive and difficult to manage, covering fields in flammable, sticky tar is a method of sabotage that can undo even the best army.

Regarding Winner Take All

Allow for retreat, but at a penalty to fatigue, movement points, morale...etc. One thing in King Arthur that I really hated was when I'd engage an inferior army in Auto Battle. i'd win, the'd retreat. Repeat. Twenty or thirty times later, it's really annoying that I've chased this enemy army across the whole GAME world because they keep retreating time and time again. Make it so that if I retreat, I can get away within reason. Do not make it so that I can get away time and time again...certainly, after the first retreat, every other retreat should take a large chunk out the universal map army movement points.

Random, random all the way!  Jeez, just imagine how bland the tactical combat would be, once you've played through the game enough to see all the premade maps.  "Oh, this one, I know just what to do on this map!"

As far as withdrawals, I vote to allow them, but why not do both ways?  How feasible would it be to simply add an option "allow withdrawals", doesn't seem like it should be too complex to me...  As far as handling retreating, I'd like to see the units' combat speed play a part.  An attacking force of nothing but foot soldiers would have a hard time retreating if the defending player was garrisoning some mounted units that could easily ride out and cut them footies down while they try and run, assuming the defender wants them to ride out, he may not, for some strange reason...  If the 'survivability' of retreating units is somehow figured out randomly, then yeah speed oughta be a factor, slower units should have a harder time escaping.  Another thing, once the retreat order is given, please do *not* allow it to be cancelled.  Just imagine a huge army, breaking rank and retreating, then the general starts shouting "wait, cancel that, attack! attack! Get back in formation!"  The definition of chaos...  Losing control of the retreating units is probably the way to go.

Battle length - I can't see how having a defined limit on the length of a battle would work.  Granted, an attacker sieging a city will need supplies, but how would that be implemented?  Someone on page 1 mentioned distance from their nearest city; how would that effect going into the heart of the enemy's domain and attacking a city there?  That nearest city may be far, far away.  Maybe figure out some kind of system for a supply train?  Or, for simplicity's sake, maybe just say the hell with a defined limit, and the battle ends when one side retreats or is killed?  Glad I'm not a dev having to figure this one out... 

I'll vote for Random maps. I also want the option to retreat. And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't allow the hero's / adventurers to live if they are suppose to die. I hate games that do this.

I am actually very much in favour of turn based, tile mapped tactical battles. I think the AI stands much more chance of being competent in such a scenario.

I hope this refers to a particular unit, and not the general/player?

I am not sure an arbitrary time limit is a great idea. Clearly there has to be a limit, but I think there should at least be the option for unlimited battles (as in TW games).

As to the morale countdown, this makes more sense in terms of a siege, but even then, it’s a very gamey concept.

Finally, I’m afraid I completely fail to agree on the concept that retreat, withdrawal or routs should be impossible or that battle results should be so “binary”. These proposals would mean that you would only enter combat if you were either 1)certain of winning or 2) willing to write off your army.

Why not just an option to auto-resolve or play a tactical battle each time? What’s the point of a threshold per se?

This depends on the size of battles, both in terms of number of units and map size, surely. An epic battle should be an epic battle…

If you want to manage the size of battles, you could limit the stack size (number of units per tile), perhaps linking this to supply/tech limits? Or just go with an arbitrary limit to the number of units.

Randomised to reflect the local terrain of the main map. If possible, I’d like to see as tight a link as possible between battle map and “campaign” map, a la total war. Set piece battle fields would be ok if they were split into categories, e .g. river, hills, mountains, plains etc and called up depending on the location on the campaign map. The very last thing I’d like to see is a small set of battle maps recycled too frequently –and with no bearing on the campaign map (e.g. hills in a river delta –or plains in a region where I stationed my troops to take advantage of the mountains!